A wide variety of wheeled industrial jacks are presently available for use by mechanics during removal, service and reinstallation of truck gear train components and the like. Typically, such jacks are provided with a load-carrying head that receives the weight of the object being carried and which is raised up or down by lift mechanism of the jack so that the component can be correspondingly raised or lowered.
One increasingly serious problem with such jacks resides in the fact that their heads are frequently not compatible with the objects sought to be handled by the jack; that is, the head may have a flat, upwardly facing surface, for example, while the object has a rounded bottom or an otherwise irregularly-shaped protrusion that would be engaged by the head. In those instances, it becomes quite difficult to maintain the object securely situated on the head during the delicate removal of the component from the underside of the vehicle being serviced and the subsequent handling of such component during repair work. Furthermore, accessibility and cramped working quarters are always factors that influence and hamper service work of this type, and jacks heretofore available have not fully come to grips with making it possible for one man to have complete control over the unwieldy, heavy components under such cramped conditions.
Accordingly, there is a significant need in this art for a jack which will enable one man to safely yet quickly and without untoward effort handle a wide variety of heavy, unwieldy and irregularly-shaped objects such as truck gear train components and to do so within the cramped working quarters which usually confront the mechanic as he seeks to remove and reinstall the components on the underside of the vehicles.